Apple’s cash pile is as big as the GDP of Finland and Jamaica, combined

So much cash is raining on some U.S.-based corporations that they are at a loss on what to do with all the money.

EXCERPT:

A big part of the reason behind the rich corporate caches is taxes — or unpaid taxes. Apple, Microsoft and many other U.S.-based international companies are sitting on well more than $2 trillion in cash from untaxed overseas profits, which could be brought back to the United States to be used for investment and dividends if lawmakers lower the U.S. corporate tax rate, which at 35 percent is one of the highest in the world.

“Apple is one of the best companies in the world, and a third of their value is sitting in vaults in Switzerland and Luxembourg and Dublin,” said Timothy Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “Isn’t that pathetic?”